Kidnapped Dream
A bit sideways for me, but still fun. This is post-Citalopram and the anti depressant has changed my creativity from writing to more hands on art :) But I am still fond of a bit of anthro cat, especially if it is handing out beatings.
She sat there for a moment wondering how she could be so silly. Sure she had been mugged before and even forced to the ground for an illegal retinal scan. But being a victim of possibly the stupidest crime ever was of little concern. Maybe they would have pulled it off if it wasn't her, but it was her. The second they had used the data their world had fallen apart. Their arrest came a few minutes later.
She had waited a few hours for them to be processed and then traveled the half hour to the detention centre. Once there she signed them out, loaded them up and took them back to their homes. That look of agonising despair on their families faces as she executed them on their own door step would last forever.
That was a simple game of patience, while this was much worse. Any type of industrial robot could of got the jump on her, but no human ever could, or anything of flesh and blood. She would hear it or smell it or feel it's thoughts. Playtime was clearly over for the day.
At first she thought it was a night time sky full of clouds, except the clouds were all suspiciously square. They were also various shades.....
And then reality hit with the jolt of a cold sweat.
She was trapped and embedded in a badly presented dream world. By the look of things it was supposed to be her uncles trim shop. The clouds were meant to be spread around the floor as she viewed them as a kitten, where she would sit on one large pink foam off-cut and watch him work.
Whatever she was hooked into had done a rough job of it, because the whole scene had failed. The irregular foam shapes were a hundred feet square, suspended over nothing and hundreds of feet apart.
But what of her body? Usually severe pain would jolt a brain back into reality as a safety feature from a dream state. If this nightmare was in the bionics hospital it would smell clean, but this illusion smelt like rot and damp. The same rank atmosphere that had met her upon entering the building?
Although she couldn't move her physical body it was different case for this virtual one. The fake dream her had given her near super powers and waiting for rescue wasn't the way of it. The fastest way out of here was simply to find out if the prison was locked into her mind or a simple artificial program.
At a furious pace she leap't from foam pad to foam pad, sinking deep into each ones surface and clawing her way back out. Looking behind her she could observe the trail of damage to plot her course.
The augmented ability to 'maze string' had saved her neck a few times in reality and it might do the same here. If it could hold a straight course then she would soon have a limit. Her own meat brain would happily twist reality until the end of time, whereas a hack on her own processor would mean a short world. Anything else would put this confused outing fully in the realm of stolen and broken tech.
At least this trip wasn't tiring, but her body would be using up her last meal fairly quickly. This was a distraction though and more important was the damaged pastel blue cloud coming up in front of her. She pounced round another lap to check she had traveled a true path. The test placed her firmly into the specification for a connection with an external world builder that had some serious issues.
This new information brought forth a plan of escape. It could only be an 'off licence' training machine, probably stolen while being shipped to a repair centre. This happened all too often and eventually they got them all back. Her next task was to get its model number. The release command depended on its age.
"Jupiter, maroon, Johannesburg, elliptical, ......."
The floating foam shapes faded from view as the program reset. The trigger word was now irrelevant as the words "sublime industries" floated a few feet away in bright neon.
"External Port," she asked in her best human impression. She had to be fast before the operator figured out she was going back to her body.
"A, B, C, D, extraction, multiple points of position," before finishing with a hiss.
That was the back up plan completed nicely, with the main event to follow.
"Reality"
Cats are great at waiting. They sit there patiently for some mouse to appear in a hedgerow or under a door. She was only a humanoid cat, but she was still more feline than machine. The deep blackness of the dream was replaced by the warm darkness of eyelids. Without as much as a change in her pace of breath she opened an eye a tiny amount.
The human male operating the training machine looked flustered. The biometric readout was a real mess. Her return to consciousness was lost in a babble of confusing brain waves on the screen.
To her left was the robot arm that had managed to put her out with a dart gun. It would likely try the same again, but the table in front of her would prevent a repeat. Sat opposite was another human who had just noticed that she might not be inside the machine. The table top disintegrated as it tried to get through his face.
A loud wuring suggested the robot arm had tried to shoot her, but the dream world operator hadn't time to see what happened. In her bust of anger the claws were firmly embedded in his neck. She lifted him from his seat and held him to the ceiling.
"Why!"
It was unlucky swipe which had taken away his ability to speak. Shaking him from her claws he fell to the floor with a dull thud. She turned to interrogate his friend who had been even less lucky. He had leapt back as the robot made to shoot her. It was the stronger of the two and had destroyed the tranquilliser gun on the way through his body.
Today had not been fun. Usually an exhilarating brush with death made her feel hyped and ready for a night on the town. All this had done was bring back confusing memories of the augmentation process. She picked up the errant training machine, set fire to the building and proceeded back out into the street.
The air outside felt less damp and maybe even pleasant as a police car pulled up right in front of her. She waved a paw at the door latch and climbed in to the surprise of the heavily armed officers inside.
"Any uptown bar please," she purred, "I need to wash the day away."
End
Team Idris